Telling The Truth by Lynne V. Cheney: Book Cover

    Telling The Truth by Lynne V. Cheney

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    (Paperback - REPRINT)

    • Pub. Date: September 1996
    • 256pp

    Reader Rating: (3 ratings)

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      Product Details

      • Pub. Date: September 1996
      • Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
      • Format: Paperback, 256pp

      Synopsis

      America is in the middle of a vast experiment, says Lynne V. Cheney, testing whether a society can thrive when more and more of its citizens doubt the importance of truth - or even whether such a thing as truth exists. Schoolchildren are being taught that the ancient Egyptians flew in gliders. University students learn that science is a white male conspiracy. In fields ranging from history to law, scholars and practitioners alike argue that their goal is not truth but the advancement of politically useful views. Journalists fall into the same pattern when they disdain objectivity and use the news to advance their viewpoints, as do psychologists who help their patients "recover" memories of events that never happened. Public figures tell us one thing today and another tomorrow and blithely accuse those who point out their inconsistencies of an "excess of literalism." In our postmodern world, everything has become relative. "Truth," according to a film at the Whitney Biennial, has become nothing more than "what is believed." As Telling the Truth reveals, the battle against this irrationality is being waged on all fronts - not just on college campuses, where "political correctness" has been spotlighted, but in schools, in the workplace, in popular culture and the media, in the legal system, in politics and government. Telling the Truth is a systematic expose of the ways in which all of the doctrines that have come to the fore in our postmodern era - from multiculturalism to critical legal studies, from radical feminism to critical race theory - have affected not only the academy but also the wider society, where they threaten the foundations of our legal, political, and social order. Cheney shows in revealing detail how government agencies at both the state and federal level have funded scholarship, programs, and exhibitions that are part of the assault on truth. Most citizens, she contends, would object to these activities - if only they knew about them. A cry of

      Annotation

      The former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities sounds an impassioned alarm against the attack on objective truth that is undermining all of society--from what our kids are taught in school to the values that hold families together.

      Publishers Weekly

      Conservative stalwart Cheney offers a polemic against what she sees as the dangers of political correctness. (Sept.)

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      Telling The Truthby Anonymous

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      July 12, 2004: Try to imagine, all cards on the table, what Cheney is really advocating. Something so esoteric (even in its supposed literality) as 'truth'? Seriously. She is a class warrior, and these sorts of polemics are simply the tracts designed to subdue and conscript the few on the right who are curious and intelligent enough to begin the steps of a liberal education. For all the imperfections that make them an easy target of second-rate minds such as the one that composed this book, the relativists and postmodernists that call to account Cheney's world of privilege are doing good work. They err, but they have always been doing good work (and there is such a thing as good work). The frightening trend in our era is not the imaginary obliteration of 'truth,' it's the very real possibility that conservatism in this country may just muster enough power to squash the liberal academic opportunity to think through the alternative to Cheney's principles of class and country. God help us when people begin to take books like this one too seriously.

      Telling The Truthby Anonymous

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      July 26, 2000: The book outlines the dangers of restricting academic freedom by attacking those who research all phases of history by using methods that uncover the truth to best one is able. However, should that truth be political incorrect then it must be silence or one must attack the person who worked to find it. This is what the book warns about into todays America. It quotes various scholars on both sides of the arguments and then lets you be the judge. You will be enlighten by this book and it will broaded your base of knowledge on history.


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